To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world. ”“ Charles Dudley Warner
Many a cold morning, I’ve drawn my chair up to the woodstove, mostly so I’ll be near it if the fire needs tending first thing. Once it gets going, and I’m sure I can walk away from it for a bit, I make coffee or tea, then sit in front of it reading. And if I’m not reading, I’m watching, for there is no end to the delights that a fire provides in a visual sense.
From the first tiny spark of the match to a full-fledged conflagration, a fire is indeed a living thing, ruthlessly consuming all that it needs to survive. Just as there are no two snowflakes alike, no two fires are ever alike. Each behaves in different ways depending upon the fuel it is drawing from for its sustenance. And watching the various paths it takes through the process is both fascinating and calming.
If the wood isn’t quite dry enough, it takes awhile for the heat to burn off the excess moisture, thus producing more smoke than anything else at first. But as the wood dries and the fire continues in its relentless quest, the heat builds, often to dangerous proportions, and coals have been known to smolder days after the fire is presumably out.
That fire is an agile entity is evidenced by how it curls itself around its prey, spreading its ethereal fingers out in search of the nearest hold, the closest dry splinter to entice. Then it dances with the wood, twirling, encircling, until finally the two become one in a burst of sparks and miniature fireworks and all within the close confines of the firebox.
The shortest distance between two points has always been a straight line, and the same holds true for heating with wood. Nothing stands between me and the wood, nothing but a few hours of hard labor and lugging. Very few checks go out to oil companies, and the switch is flipped only on the coldest days to keep the pipes from freezing. And with five acres of trees to harvest, power outages have become nothing more than an inconvenience. A lengthy one perhaps at times, but I can honestly say that my most memorable moments here have involved having to heat water on the woodstove and keeping a cast iron pan hot at all times to ward off hunger. While generators hum all around me, I sit close to the fire at such times, grateful, if nothing else, for the reminder of how quickly the illusion of comfort can vanish at nature’s whim.
There would be something basic missing from the picture here if the corner my stove sits in held a desk or sofa instead. For I’ve never been able to reconcile the waste of all that precious fuel lying on the forest floor that could, with a little effort, be keeping me warm. The luxury of getting up on a cold morning and flipping a switch hasn’t yet outweighed the bother, and I hope it doesn’t for awhile yet. I’ll persevere as long as I can, and continue to enjoy that feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment when I see the logs piled high near the stove and sit quietly watching as the fire rewards me for my efforts a thousand times over.
— Rachel Lovejoy is a freelance writer living in Lyman. She can be reached via e-mail at rlovejoy84253@roadrunner.com.
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